New Features:

- Fokker Dr. I added to the game and available for purchase.- Sopwith Camel added to the game and available for purchase.- New summer textures added.- AI: New maneuver hook turn for close air combat added.- AI: New maneuver rolling for close air combat added.- PLANES: Blip switch added. Key assignment by default is: Shift + E.- GUI: Fly now option added to the main menu.- GRAPHICS: Cartridge belt disappears when out of ammo on Albatros D.Va, Pfalz D.IIIa.- GRAPHICS: Radiator pressure cap added to Pfalz D.XII.- STATS: Destroyed wagons are now counted in statistics.- DOCUMENTATION: Rise of Flight Mission Editor Manual now available.

Changes/Fixes:

- AI: AI pilot shooting accuracy decreased.- AI: AI gunner shooting accuracy decreased.- AI: AI fighters no longer flee from a close fight.- PLANES: Landing gear does not jam when lower wing is damaged.- PLANES: Fokker D.VII now touches ground surface when standing.- PLANES: Planes are now controlled by the lower ailerons when upper ones are damaged.- PLANES: Force Feedback joysticks dont get stuck in extreme positions when elevator is damaged.- PLANES: Nosed-over planes no longer jump.- GRAPHICS: Sopwith Dolphins sideslip indicator animation fixed.- NETWORK: Pilots with empty machineguns can no longer shoot.- GUI: Corrections made to German version.- GUI: Corrections made to French version.- GUI: Corrections made to Spanish version.- GUI: Corrections made to English version.- GUI: Corrections made to Russian version.

Related Articles:

Related Videos:

Promo 6: Sopwith Camel In FlightPromo 4: Sopwith Camel engine demo]]>http://wwiaircombat.com/articles/video-of-rise-of-flights-sopwith-camel-in-action
What you've been waiting for: introducing the Fokker Dr. 1 and Sopwith Camel for Rise of Flight!Rise of Flight by default, are now coming in the upcoming patch 1.008! Neoqb's Lefty says the patch it due late October, which is essentially next week.

More details about 1.008 will be revealed when the patch is released.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on these new and truly amazing screenshots (click for higher quality). And if you're still not satiated, check out some of the old videos with the Camel and Dr. 1 from when the game was still in development (scroll to the bottom under "Related videos").

Related videos:

(SimHQ forums via Rise of Flight forums)]]>http://wwiaircombat.com/articles/what-youve-been-waiting-for-introducing-the-fokker-dr-1-and-sopwith-camel-for-rise-of-flight
Introducing Flying SamuraiFlying Samurai is (so far) the work of four students who are working on the game as a university project. It looks like they have a lot of the core programming done, and now all they need is the help of the WWI community. to flesh out the rest of the game

In particular, they are looking for testers, historians, blueprint researchers, artists and modelers. In addition to this, they're looking for photos to help with accurately modeling the aircraft.

The game is aimed towards realism, and while it's not and
probably never will be really realistic, it's definitely not meant to
be an arcade game. Currently, it contains career mode and
single player mode and 5 mission types (ace dogfight, patrol the front,
escort & raid bombarders, squadron dogfight; no further mission
types are currently planned).

The career mode is almost fully
configurable... squadrons, airfields, nations, sides (Allied vs.
Entente), pilots, airplanes, map, front, awards, ranks... all of that
is configurable, and where it makes sense, a time dependency
has been introduced (pilots get assigned to different squadrons,
airfields may change locations, front might move; although, currently,
pilots only have one default airplane for the whole war).

We're
currently working on AI and a network mode (LAN, but
will try our best to make it fast enough for the Internet), also
working on improving and finishing other aspects (menu, career,
graphics, etc.). There is joystick support and there's is a huge, continuous, terrain (500x400 km)

(via The Aerodrome Forums, Wings of Honour)]]>http://wwiaircombat.com/articles/introducing-flying-samurai
WWI aircraft coming soon to Aces High IIThe Fokker Dr. 1 in Aces High IIWWI seems to definitely be making a revival of sorts in the sim world. As mods to WWII games go, we have of course Over Flanders Fields (mod for Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 3) as well as the more recent Canvas Knights, which is a mod in development for IL2 Sturmovik.

We are pleased
to announce an upcoming expansion to the Aces High plane set that will
introduce World War I (WWI) air combat to the skies of Aces High. The
initial four plane set will consist of the Fokker Dr.I, Sopwith Camel,
Bristol F.2B, and Fokker D.VII.

These
new planes will be available in a separate WWI dogfight arena and will
also be available for special events. They will be the first planes to
use a new damage system with greatly expanded capability.

Release of the WWI planes is expected before the end of the year although it will not be in the next version release.

]]>http://wwiaircombat.com/articles/wwi-aircraft-coming-soon-to-aces-high-ii
Leaderboards come to Rise of FlightNeoqb has released a press statement to announce the arrival of their way of introducing a little friendly competition into Rise of Flight: the arrival of leaderboards!

The new Red Baron of the 21st century is perhaps already flying with us, and
virtual pilots and guests of Rise of Flight: The First Great Air
War can now know his or her modern-day name!
A new system of global statistics (the Leaderboard) will
be in operation at the Community section of the official website
of the game. Using universally-collated pilot statistics, neoqb plans to
organise cyber competitions all over the World: with both valuable prizes and
awards for the best virtual pilots.

Due to your statistics being collected from your constant connection to the
Internet, with your points earned by flying on different servers and with the
possibility of having up to three game profiles/avatars, the competition is
going to be extremely tight, interesting and fair.

The leaderboard statistics will be updated twice a day, and will show the top
pilots in the different game modes, sorted by country or by plane, as well as
the best multiplayer mode pilots.
In all ratings, including the overall rating, the winners national flags
are displayed and the first placed winner will be highlighted with a crown.

The overall
rating displays the top 1000 players in Career and Multiplayer modes.

In the League
Rating you will find the top players in Career and Multiplayer modes,
sorted by league. The league tables comprise: the South Pacific League, the
Asia League, the Eastern European League, the Western European League, the
North American League, the Northern European League, the South American League
and the Southern European League.

Aircraft
type rating will display the top 100 players in Career and Multiplayer
modes, sorted by aircraft type.

Career
mode and Single
player mode statistics will display the top 100 players in these game modes.

Find yourself in the Rise of Flight Leaderboards! Who is the new Red Baron? Is
it you?]]>http://wwiaircombat.com/articles/leaderboards-come-to-rise-of-flight
Red Baron creator seeks to revives franchise, hints at Red Baron 4If you were at all paying attention, last month Mad Otter Games acquired to rights to the Red Baron series. So what is Mad Otter? It's a gaming company headed by Damon Slye, who co-founded Dynamix and created the original Red Baron series back in 1990. This acquisition gives them the rights to Red Baron, Red Baron II, and Red Baron 3D.

Here's what Damon has to say about it, related to us via longtime RB3D veteran Flybert:

"I'm trying to figure out how to reconstruct this game and make it
viable in 2009. We weren't looking for the Red Baron rights, it just
suddenly dropped in my lap unexpectedly. .. rights bounced around from
Dynamix to Sierra to Vivendi to Activision to GarageGames before unexpectedly finding its way back to me, like some crazy boomerang."

There's one small problem - as you may recall from one of my earlier updates, no one knows exactly where the source code is. Because of this, Mad Otter has offered $1,500 for the first person to deliver the original C/C++ code to any of the games.

Red Baron II source code surfaces

Then our old friend Flybert popped up and claimed to have the source code:

Now that I can't get in trouble for having it ..

I've had, for a few years now, the source code for RBII circa rb2_1.5 sans graphics module

I'm in touch with Damon and have this available to him to download

also made him aware I/we have MCU.exe, Matilda.exe and TED.exe

I also have 'source' objects CD .. and of course all the original .3ds files

I'm
not particularly interested in the $1500 as much as either helping to
re-issuing RB3D in a more modern form OR more importantly, being
involved with making a new Red Baron sim

Flybert has been in communication with Damon and offered the possibility of future additions to Red Baron 3D: "Damon definitely wants the entire community involved in a positive way .. Chances are a new official forum and website will be set up for community input and testing of development betas *if* this goes forward".

Red Baron 4?

If that's not enough news for you, there's one more juicy tidbit from Eurogamer last week that strongly hints at the possibility of Red Baron 4 becoming a reality:

Red Baron creator Damon Slye has told Eurogamer he wants to build "a
new version [of the game] with a modern engine", now that he has
re-acquired the licence from Activision Blizzard.

"I have a lot of ideas for the design," said Slye. "There is a lot of value in the name Red Baron. It's one of a kind."

This is quite exciting! I really hope I will soon have more to report on this, as Red Baron is and remains my favorite franchise.

Background info on Mad Otter (from Gamasutra)

"Mad Otter was founded by Damon Slye, co-founder of Dynamix and designer of 1990's original Red Baron. The Mad Otter team includes numerous other former Dynamix staffers.

Slye himself left game development in 1994, before the release of 1997's Red Baron II, but returned in 1997 to start up Mad Otter.

The company has developed the game Ace of Aces for
InstantAction, the web-based game platform created by GarageGames --
another company with considerable Dynamix heritage, including having
been originally founded by Slye's fellow Dynamix co-founder Jeff
Tunnell."

Sources:Gamasutra, Eurogamer, Wings of Honour]]>http://wwiaircombat.com/articles/red-baron-creator-seeks-to-revives-franchise-hints-at-red-baron-4
Winners of the Rise of Flight October 2009 screenshot contest announcedNeoqb has announced the winners of their screenshot contest. The winners have all received plane unlocks for free, and the top winners won a place in Rise of Flight's official gallery. Congratulations to VonZimmerman, Voidhunger, and Isay!

It's expected that more contests will be offered in the future, so stay tuned!

Here's the winners! (as always, click on the images for slightly better quality)

the present map will have options for two types of terrain: a highly detailed version for single player and an optimized version for multiplayer (which should help lower-end computers run the game)

skin templates for aircraft will be made available

RoF will soon come with DirectX 11 support (Windows 7), making the game even more detailed

there will be an SDK for aircraft, including a plugin for 3DMax

there will be two game modes: original mode and mod mode. Original mode will allow the game to run only with the original files, whereas mod mode will allow the player to run any user-made mods. If the mods are quality enough, they may be reviewed by neoqb and actually incorporated into the core game.

a flight recorder will be available soon in a future update

in the distant future, there are plans for a complete reworking of career mode and the implementation of a dogfight mode for multiplayer

Nice to see a bit of a roadmap of what's ahead. A bit disappointed that dogfight mode seems so far off though. But it's good to know it's in the plans!

Albert Zhiltsov (Loft) and Maxim Goryuchkin of neoqb

The Rise of Flight game display at the 7th German Simulator Conference

EDIT: Corrected name of person in the first picture, who is not J99 Longarth, but actually Frank Moellenhof, Project Manager of Aerosoft wearing the J99 shift given to him by Longarth. Thanks Hasso for the correction :)